Any Good?
Well? Somebody?
Well I guess I'll answer my own post. It was very good, and true to the originals. What looked like hand drawn animation, perfectly matching voices, no adults visible. The slow pacing and no connection to anything in the "today" world made it seem as if it were made for nostalgic adults. unlike some of the newer ones that showed modern looking cars, cordless phones, and adults walking around. The only thing that made it NOT look and feel like a vintage cartoon was the overall smoothness of it(which I guess is a good thing), and also some of the color fill-ins looked computer generated(door, TV, Couch).
The background score is a perfect match to Vince Gauraldi I had to watch the credits to see if they used some of his obscure stuff that I didn't know. Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo actually did it. It sounds exactly like Charlie Brown music without actually using any of Gauraldi's sequences(that I recognised, anyway).
While this will never be a classic, only for the mere fact that it's not 40 years old. Plus I don't think Peanuts appeals to small children the way it did 40 years ago. Again I think this cartoon was made with adults in mind.
It's definitely much better than most, if not all of the Peanuts stuff pumped out in the past 20 years.
Thanks for the review. I'm surprised their aren't more posts yet. I didn't even know about this until they started promoting it on the Comcast On-Demand menu. I'm surprised they finally made a new one and without Shultz being alive I wondered how it would be. Charlie Brown was my favorite cartoon as a kid. I even have one of those awesome Halloween figures. I was a depressed kid so I could always relate to the depressing theme in the show although it was a bit too sad at times. Does this new one have that feeling? I'm going to save it to watch it with my niece next time she comes over.
shareit definitely captures the feeling of the 60's peanuts perfectly. the only thing that seemed a little off to me was the pacing, voice work and sound effects. i'm finally glad to see that the franchise is back in good hands. i hated some of the more recents peanuts for watering down the humor to make it more politically correct(thank god no rerun). i'm also glad they put violet and shermie back in the mix. as a fan of the 60's era peanuts, i'm more than pleased.
shareThanks for the reply jdiggy. Sounds good. I watched a couple of youtube videos with behinds the scenes stuff like the pencil test and an interview with Shultz son who said that the story was written by Charles Chultz was was interesting. The voices sound close but not as close as I'd like to have had them be judging from watching the trailer and some previews. The kids did a good job regardless. Sultz son said they had kids from all over send in a recording of their voices and all he had to here was the kids say where they were from and state their names and he knew which to pick. I wonder if all the kids were actually actors or just regular kids. Either way they did good voice acting for kids.
shareIt's very good, much better than the 90's specials they did. The voices seem a bit off at first hearing, but the more you listen, the more they actually resemble the originals in a way (lucys especially seems very different at first hearing)
It's a tad long in my opinion, as there's a lot of references to old jokes and gags, and they're not done as well as they originally were (the leaf jumping scene in particular) but there are ones done very well.
The animation style is quite good, it's very nice they went back to making it look like the older hand drawn animation (I believe they did do actual hand animation with this)
My only major gripe is the music, as usual with the "newer" ones and their resistance to using Vince's actual music (likely because they'd have to pay royalties, god forbid) and instead doing remakes of it, tuning it to be more "modern"....that was the beauty of the music, is that it was never really modern even back in it's day, it was different, very non mainstream. I wish they'd learn this and use the old music again.
I was especially heart broken that there wasn't even a redo of Lucy and Linus's theme, considering the main character this time was Linus himself, and there was ample opportunity to do so (multiple scenes with Snoopy and dragging Linus around by his blanket, which were key scenes that used that music before)
But it definitely ranks up there with the classics, and I enjoyed it almost as much as the older ones that I re-watch again and again.
This was much better paced than the later Peanuts specials. The segments weren't rushed, and they didn't flow into each other abruptly. Very sweet as well...
share[deleted]
Loved it! The special had a classic Peanuts feel.
shareI thought it was the best Peanuts special in years. The voices and music were both excellent. My only complaint was that I don't think the plot justified the hour-long length.
Clearly a lot of care went into production to make this one closer in tone and feel to the classic 60s specials. They succeeded.